The PQ’s story may not be over, but it feels like Quebec has turned the page

MONTREAL — The Quebec election severely rattled the incumbent Parti Québécois Monday, but Liberal premier-elect Philippe Couillard said the most significant shift in the province’s politics occurred below the surface.

“There was a realignment of the political forces in Quebec, what I called a moving of the tectonic plates,” Mr. Couillard told reporters in Quebec City. People in the francophone regions and younger voters — two groups that have typically favoured the PQ — embraced the Liberals.

“Both regionally and in terms of generations, a significant change in politics is happening in Québec, and it’s not over,” Mr. Couillard said. “I think this will carry on in the coming years, so politicians better be realigning themselves to the new reality.”

Mr. Couillard began the campaign with a challenge to the PQ’s presumption that it alone could define and protect Quebec’s identity. He said the PQ’s proposed charter of values and stricter language legislation reflected an outdated vision of Quebec.

“This political party continues to present Quebecers as weak, besieged, threatened people,” he said after PQ leader Pauline Marois called the election on March 5. “When it’s not the federal government, it’s the other provinces. When it’s not the federal government or the other provinces, it is foreigners who come to live here. And when it’s not the foreigners living here, it is us, Quebecers who don’t think like them. I’m fed up with that, and it’s going to end with this election.”

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It seemed like a long shot at the time, but Mr. Couillard’s gamble paid off as the Liberals captured 70 of the province’s 125 ridings in Monday’s vote. As he addressed the National Assembly press gallery Tuesday, there was not a single question about what powers or additional funds his government would seek from Ottawa. Instead he spoke of a partnership with the provinces and federal government.

“We will go and sit at the table, but we will go there to once again talk about Quebec,” he said, “to show and remind them to what extent our specific character is part of the very nature of the Canadian fibre, and that we want to act to create jobs and prosperity in collaboration with all our colleagues from Canada.”

During the campaign, the PQ attacked Mr. Couillard for stating during a debate that some factory workers might need to learn English to deal with foreign customers. It was presented in the media as a damaging failure to defend the primacy of French.

But Mr. Couillard said he heard differently from voters. “We are all attached to French, and the French face of Quebec is absolutely crucial to our identity, which by the way I want to be shared by all Quebecers from all origins,” he said. “This being said, for anybody to say that it’s not advantageous to someone to become bilingual, or for our kids to be bilingual, is nonsense.”

He said that wherever he campaigned, people applauded the Liberal promise to increase the teaching of English in elementary schools. “There is not a single parent in Quebec that doesn’t want this,” he said. And young voters are turned off “by anything that limits us or prevents us from having broader horizons.”

François Legault led the Coalition Avenir Québec to a strong third-place finish, winning 22 seats, and he said Tuesday that he expects to play an active opposition role as the PQ grapples with its crushing defeat. The separatist party won 30 seats with 25% of the vote, its worst showing since 1970.

Mr. Legault said the PQ’s pursuit of an “imaginary country” was damaging “the real country,” and he presented the CAQ as an alternative for nationalists who do not want independence. “You don’t have to be a sovereigntist to love our language, to defend it and to defend our identity,” he said.

Mr. Legault said the PQ’s pursuit of an “imaginary country” was damaging “the real country,”

He expressed the hope that under the Liberals, the government’s focus will return to improving Quebec’s economy. “I don’t like to see Quebec receiving $9.3-billion of equalization payments from the rest of Canada, and I hope it becomes a priority for Mr. Couillard,” he said.

The above-ground damage left by Monday’s vote was plain to see, as dazed Parti Québécois members either nursed their wounds or lashed out at imagined culprits.

Early signs suggested the PQ was not interpreting the election results the same way as Messrs. Couillard and Legault. On Monday night, before PQ leader Pauline Marois could even take the stage to concede defeat and offer her resignation, three potential leadership contenders told supporters that the party would maintain its course.

Pierre Karl Péladeau renewed his pitch for sovereignty, vowing “to defend the interests of Quebecers, and of the country.” Bernard Drainville, the man behind the values charter, promised that “our values will be defended” and ended his speech chanting, “We want a country!” Jean-Francois Lisée began by saying Quebecers must be listened to, before launching into a defence of the PQ and predicting it will retake power. “Tonight is not the end of the story,” he said.

The story may not be over, but more than ever it feels like Quebecers have turned the page.